Valentine’s Day is a magnificent day to expect love. Especially if you’ve had marriage problems recently, avoid the trap of expecting chocolates or dinner or jewelry or something romantic. Your chances of expecting the right thing are tiny. Your chances of missing out on love when you expect some particular sign of it are great. The best gift you can give your husband on...
From The Georgian Times this week: Theoretically Georgia [the country between Turkey and Russia, not the US state] should have a decreasing divorce rate. In the Soviet period getting married was a civil contract, without the deeper relevance of an Orthodox Christian marriage . . . In the Orthodox Christian understanding . . . marriage is a calling, and people marry if they are ‘called’ to do so...
What an honor it is to walk into someone’s life at just the right moment. I had a chance recently to talk about assuming love, expecting love, and looking for the third alternative with a woman ready to toss in the towel on her marriage. Recent life events had created a lot of tension between her and her husband of twenty-plus years. Like me when I was 34 years old and frantic, she’d...
From time to time, I watch the Dr. Phil Show to see what sorts of problems married couples bring him. Yesterday, his guests wanted him to make their spouses get rid of junk cluttering the house. The accused spouses, of course, did not see it as junk. Dr. Phil made the mistake I’ve heard so many therapists and marriage counselors make: he served as arbitrator. He took sides. He encouraged...
I haven’t posted here in almost six weeks. Where was I? Creating a new website, www.enjoybeingmarried.com. I hope you’ll come check it out. It has a resource directory of do-it-yourself marriage education resources (books, DVDs, CDs, games, etc.) from many sources. It lists my upcoming teleclasses. And soon it will have podcasts and eBooks for you to download. I want to make it as...
